A Separate Peace Character Analysis

People are colliding into battles continuously around the globe. It's not always a physical brawl between two armed forces but it also occur mentally and emotionally. On page 139 of A Separate Peace, a quote was mentioned by Gene, "...because it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and theirs special stupidities but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart..." This quote can relate to the novel, a personal experience and another literary work.

A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, is a seemingly simple yet heartbreaking story that gives the reader an inside look and analysis of the reality of human nature. Set permanently in the main character Gene’s point of view, the audience is first taken to the present of a reflective and now wise man (Gene) and then plunged into his past back in 1942 to relive the harsh lessons that youth brought him. Along with vivid imagery of tranquil days past, a view into the social construct of a boy’s private school, Devon, and the looming presence of World War 2 on the horizon, there is also a significant power struggle that the reader can observe almost instantly. Conquering the need to be supreme in the situations of the war, high school, social interactions, and even simple moments that

Competition and rivalry have the ability to make people shine and accomplish things they never thought possible, and the ability to bring a person’s dark side and get them to do terrible things. Phineas and Gene’s friendship is viewed very differently by each of them. Where Phineas sees Gene as his best friend Gene sees Phineas as a competitor. Gene sees him as someone trying to keep him from being successful in school. This warped view of their relationship is the cause of many of the eventual problems of the novel and arguably the death of Phineas.

In today’s age teenage school boys are the farthest from innocent. In “A Separate Peace” Finny is portrayed as a slick, cunning, smart boy who tends to get whatever he wants. Teachers and students alike seem to fall at his feet and indulge in his little games. He’s proven several times in the story that he knows how to get people to do as he wants. Finny smiles and jokes his way through any sort of serious situation and he always seems to come out on top as he plays everyone around him like fine tuned instrument. In this novel, Finny is a magnetic, charismatic character whom people cannot help liking, but he is also manipulative, immature, and self centered. He is not nearly as innocent as he seems. Being all those thing doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person or even an evil person. Finny could very well think he is doing the right thing by ‘helping’ Gene out by pushing him to

“I don’t give any reason for anyone to hate me. They create their own little drama out of jealousy.”-David James. Gene is jealous of Phineas, because he is better at everything. In the book A Separate Peace there is a lot of evidence proving this quote.

After the realization of the person he truly is Gene confronts with his problems, faces reality, and deals with the future. He learns a lot about life and relationships when he finds about his true self. He learns that he must truly express his feelings and communicate instead of keeping all the feelings inside as he had always done with Phineas. Also he learns to listen to himself not others around him if he wants a true advice. After a while, he faced reality and acknowledged the fact that he was not as great was Phineas but they were two different individuals and they were unique in different ways. Gene accepted the guilt for Phineas’ difficulties after his accident and decided he must he must help him as a punishment and act of repentance for what his deed. He does this by giving part of himself to Phineas as we see with the case of the sports

“It struck me then that I was injuring him again” (75). This quote showcases that over time, Gene treats Phineas differently after he has seen how his jealousy has affected him. Gene always acts like there is a competition between him and his best friend, Phineas. After he and the other characters have suffered throughout the book, he learns to confront his jealousy and to move forward after. Throughout the novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene Forrester matures and learns how to understand his actions and how they impact other characters, and teaches readers that they can move forward if they learn to face their problems.

Is competition allowed in a friendship? Or should two friends be just friends or just rivals. According to many studies, competition is healthy for a friendship. It allows for a group of friends to push each other and get better. But what if there was a friend who took the competition to heart and viewed the friendship more like a rivalry? In John Knowles, A Separate Peace, the protagonist, Gene Forrester, and his best friend, Finny, grow from a great friendship to a full out rivalry. Can a friendship be a rivalry?

-Gene Forrester was the main character of the novel, A Separate Peace. I can relate to Gene’s competitiveness with his best friend, yet I admire Gene’s intelligence and determination. The reason I relate to Gene’s competitive nature is because I am also competitive with my friends, as they are with me. I admire Gene’s intelligence that not only naturally comes to him, but his determination to keep his grades up at The Devon School. The reason I admire him for these traits are because I find myself struggling to balance out my academics and social life during the school year. I see Gene as a role model because of the way he seems to maintain his studies and friends.

At the start, Gene is instantly jealousy of Finny, creating a fake friendship that is fueled by competition. This is shown when he wants to do something so he is good at, so he “was becoming the best student in the school: Phineas was without question the best athlete, so in that way we were even” (Knowles 55). This proves that their friendship is fueled by competition because it shows that Gene always wants to be even. This

John Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace is about a few boys at a boarding school in New Hampshire. The story is centered around the friendship of two boys, Gene and Finny, at a boarding school in New Hampshire. Although in the beginning of their friendship Gene did not trust Finny, by the time he dies Gene feels as if a part of him has died, showing that he still felt closely bonded to him after all they had been through.

Sometimes people read a text and do not go any further into the message inside. Howeverin the story A Separate Peace by John Knowles, The character of Finny represents innocence-aninnocence that is destroyed when it is forced to confront the hatred and evil in the real world.Finny is preserved by most as a picture of innocence because he acts like he has nothingto hide from anyone. The reader can infer this because, most of the teachers at Devon seem tothink of him this all good boy way. The reason the reader thinks this is because, they let the stuffthat Finny does, that is against the rules, slide and he does not get in any form of trouble.However when anyone else at Devon done these things they do not let them off as easy. Thisbeing because of the fact that Finny had a certain attitude towards life that made people not seethe bad in him.However later in the novel Finny falls from the tree and

When Gene is quick to realize that him and Finny will never be of the same power, Knowles shows us that a loss of identity may be present in a relationship if there is an unequal amount of power. Gene realizes that Finny is someone who can do anything and he states that “He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could be any rivalry between us. I was not the same quality as he” (59). Gene’s low self-esteem starts to build up as he explains that no matter how hard he tries, he will never be as good and powerful as Phineas. Finny has everything in his power and is capable of so many things also remaining his own person. However, Gene feels the complete opposite as he understands that to become someone as mighty as Finny, he has to change who he is to even get Finny to notice him as a threat. As a result of this unequal

The novel Separate Peace, Gene shows his dark side twice; once with Phineas, and once with Leper. Within the novel Phineas and Gene were both climbing a tree and he unknowingly shook the tree branch making Phineas fall and breaking his leg. This shows his dark side by what he is capable of doing. Later on Gene was with Leper talking about Phineas when Gene was getting annoyed about the conversation and the only way he knew had to stop it was to kick Leper's chair from up under him. "Laughing and crying he lay his head on the floor and his knees up '… always were a savage underneath."(pg. 145 Knowles) Leper said to Gene as he was leaving. With Leper saying this you can tell the Gene has no control in what he does and doesn’t know how to handle

A Separate Peace, which was written by John Knowles, has many themes. They are interconnected throughout the book. The most clearly portrayed theme is fear. It seems to be connected with the themes of friendship, jealousy, and war. As World War II was occurring, fear had taken over Gene's life through these various themes. When he visited Devon fifteen years after leaving the school, Gene claimed, "I had lived in fear while attending the school and I can now feel fear's echo" (Knowles 10). He felt like he had gained a separate peace after escaping from this fear.